Hash based beam alignment

ABSTRACT

An approach to acquisition of a propagation direction using a phased antenna array avoids a need to scan space. Given all possible directions for setting the antenna beam, the approach provably finds the optimal direction in logarithmic number of measurements. Further, the approach can be applied within the existing 802.11ad standard for mmWave LAN, and can support both clients and access points.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No.62/307,777, titled “mmWave Communication,” filed Mar. 14, 2016, which isincorporated herein by reference.

FEDERAL SPONSORSHIP

This invention was made with Government support under Contract No.FA8721-05-C-0002 awarded by the U.S. Air Force. The Government hascertain rights in the invention.

BACKGROUND

This invention relates to hash-based beam alignment in a phased antennaarray, and in particular relates to beam alignment without requiringexhaustive scanning of beam directions.

There is much interest in integrating millimeter wave radios (mmWave)into wireless LANs and 5G cellular networks to benefit from theirmultiple GHz of available spectrum. Yet unlike existing technologies,e.g., WiFi, mmWave radios require highly directional antennas. Since theantennas have pencil-beams, the transmitter and receiver need to aligntheir antenna beams before they can communicate. Existing solutions scanthe entire space to find the best alignment. Such a process has beenshown to introduce up to seconds of delay, and is unsuitable forwireless networks where an access point has to quickly switch betweenusers and accommodate mobile clients.

The IEEE 802.11ad includes a beam searching mechanism, however, is notdefined in detail in the standard documentation, and it has been leftopen to the manufacturer. This has resulted in several variations of the802.11ad beam searching mechanism presented in different documents.However, at a high level, it works in three stages in order to find thebest beam alignment between an access point (AP) and a client [3, 8].

The first stage is called Sector Level Sweep (SLS). In this stage, theAP transmits in all possible directions, and the client sets itsreceiver beam pattern to a quasi-omnidirectional beam. The process isthen repeated with the AP setting its receiver antenna toquasi-omnidirectional and the client sweeping through all transmitdirections. At the end of this stage, the AP and client each pick the γdirections that deliver the largest power. The second stage is calledMultiple sector ID Detection (MID). This stage repeats the process abovebut with the transmit beam set to quasi-omni-directional and the scanbeing performed with the receive beam. This stage compensates forimperfections in the quasi omnidirectional beams. The third stage iscalled Beam Combining (BC). In this stage, each of the γ best directionsat the AP are tried with each of the γ directions at the client. Hence,γ² combinations are tested and the combination of transmit and receivebeam directions that deliver the maximum power is then selected and usedfor beamforming during the data transmission.

REFERENCES

-   [1] Christopher R. Anderson and Theodore S. Rappaport. In-Building    Wideband Partition Loss Measurements at 2.5 and 60 GHz. IEEE    Transactions on Wireless Communications, 3(3), May 2004.-   [2] Haitham Hassanieh, Piotr Indyk, Dina Katabi, and Eric Price.    Nearly optimal sparse fourier transform. In STOC, 2012.-   [3] IEEE Standards Association. IEEE Standards 802.11ad-2012:    Enhancements for Very High Throughput in the 60 GHz Band, 2012.-   [4] Sundeep Rangan, Theodore S Rappaport, and Elza Erkip.    Millimeter-wave cellular wireless networks: Potentials and    challenges. Proceedings of the IEEE, 2014.-   [5] Sanjib Sur, Vignesh Venkateswaran, Xinyu Zhang, and Parameswaran    Ramanathan. 60 GHz Indoor Networking through Flexible Beams: A    Link-Level Profiling. In SIGMETRICS, 2015.-   [6] Sanjib Sur, Xinyu Zhang, Parameswaran Ramanathan, and Ranveer    Chandra. BeamSpy: Enabling Robust 60 GHz Links Under Blockage. In    NSDI, 2016.-   [7] D. Tse and P. Vishwanath. Fundamentals of Wireless    Communications. Cambridge University Press, 2005.-   [8] Liang Zhou and Yoji Ohashi. Efficient Codebook-Based MIMO    Beamforming for Millimeter-Wave WLANs. In PIMRC, 2012.

SUMMARY

In one aspect, in general, a new protocol (referred to herein as“Rapid-Link”) can find the best mmWave beam alignment without scanningthe space. Given all possible directions for setting the antenna beam,Rapid-Link provably finds the optimal direction in logarithmic number ofmeasurements. Further, Rapid-Link works within the existing 802.11adstandard for mmWave LAN, and can support both clients and access points.An implementation of Rapid-Link in a mmWave radio shows that beamalignment delay can be reduced by orders of magnitude. In particular,for highly directional mmWave devices operating under 802.11ad, thedelay drops from over a second to 2.5 ms.

In another aspect, in general, a method is used to determine apropagation direction of a signal within a range of directions at atransceiver coupled to a plurality of antenna elements. An iterativeprocedure performed. At each iteration of a plurality of iterations, thesignal is passed (e.g., received or transmitted) via the plurality ofantenna elements and processed according a set of antenna patterns forthe iteration to yield a plurality of plurality of response values. Eachresponse value of the plurality of response values at an iterationrepresents a strength of response (e.g., an average magnitude or energy)to the signal according to a different pattern of the set of antennapatterns for the iteration. Each plurality of response values for aniteration has a greatest value corresponding to one of the patterns ofthe set of antenna patterns for that iteration. Each iteration uses adifferent set of antenna patterns. Each set of antenna patterns includesa pattern with multiple directional lobes. For each set of antennapatterns, a direction of each directional lobe of each pattern isdistinct from the directions of all other directional lobes of otherpatterns in said set. For each set of antenna patterns, for eachpropagation direction with the range of directions, at least one antennapattern provides substantial response to signals in said propagationdirection. The plurality of response values from each iteration arecombined to yield a characterization of the propagation direction of thesignal (e.g., a directional profile) by combining antenna patterns ofthe sets of antenna patterns. This combining includes combining thepattern corresponding to the response value having the greatest valuefrom each iteration to yield a directional profile of the receivedsignal.

Aspects may include combinations of one or more of the followingfeatures.

The transceiver comprises a receiver and the signal is received via theplurality of antenna elements, the propagation direction comprising adirection of arrival of the signal.

The signal is transmitted to the receiver using an omni-directionalantenna pattern at the transmitter.

The signal is transmitted to the receiver using successive multi-lobeantenna patterns, which together form a substantially anomni-directional antenna pattern at the transmitter.

The transceiver comprises a transmitter and the signal is transmittedvia the plurality of antenna elements, the propagation directioncomprising a direction of transmission of the signal.

The response values are determined at a receiver of the signal.

Combining the plurality of response values from each iteration comprisescombining only the pattern corresponding to the response value havingthe greatest value from each iteration.

Combining the plurality of response values from each iteration comprisescombining multiple patterns from each iteration weighted according tothe plurality of response values for that iteration.

Characterization of the propagation direction of the signal comprises adistribution over directions in the range of directions.

The method further comprises determining the propagation direction fromthe characterization of the direction of arrival.

The method further comprises determining a restricted range ofdirections from the characterization of the propagation direction, anddetermining the propagation direction within the restricted range.

For at least some sets of the antenna patterns, each pattern in said sethas a same number of directional lobes.

The sets of antenna patterns are determined prior to the signal beingtransmitted.

The method further comprises determining the sets of antenna patterns.

Determining the sets of antenna patterns includes randomizing theantenna patterns.

Determining the sets of antenna patterns determining a second set ofantenna patterns from a first set of antenna patterns by a randomtransformation.

Each pattern of the second set of antenna patterns corresponds to adifferent pattern of the first set of antenna patterns, and thedirections of directional lobes of the pattern of the second set arerelated to the directions of directional lobes of the pattern of thefirst set by a random permutation of directions.

A plurality of antenna elements form a linear equally spaced array.

The antenna patterns of the sets of antenna patterns aretwo-dimensional.

The antenna patterns of the sets of antenna patterns arethree-dimensional.

Performing the iterative procedure includes performing iterations insequence using different time portions of the signal.

In another aspect, in general, a transceiver is configured to be coupledto a plurality of antenna elements and configured to perform all thesteps of any of the methods set forth above.

In another aspect, in general, a tangible machine-readable mediumcomprises instructions stored thereon for causing a processor of atransceiver, when coupled to a plurality of antenna elements, to performall the steps of any of the methods set forth above.

Advantages of aspects include solution to the technical problem ofacquisition of a propagation direction in a shorter amount of time thanrequired using conventional approaches, such as scanning. Furthermore,accuracy may be improved over other approached by increasing thesignal-to-noise ratio of received signals. The approach may beparticularly applicable to millimeter wave radio signals, but isapplicable and may provide similar advantages in other propagated signalbands and propagation modes.

Other features and advantages of the invention are apparent from thefollowing description, and from the claims.

DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a radio communication system implementingbeam alignment.

FIG. 2 is a set of antenna patterns for B=4 patterns, each with R=4lobes.

FIG. 3 is a set of antenna patterns resulting from permutation of thepatterns shown in FIG. 2.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a multiple iteration beam acquisitionprocedure.

FIG. 5 is a pair of block diagrams for both a transmitter (a) andreceiver (b).

FIG. 6 is a plot of SNR at the receiver versus distance between thereceiver and the transmitter.

FIG. 7 is a pair of plots showing (a) a direction of arrival and (b) adirection of departure.

FIG. 8 is a plot of beam accuracy with a single path.

FIG. 9 is a plot of beam accuracy with multipath.

FIG. 10 is a plot of beam alignment latency.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Overview and Notation

Referring to FIG. 1, an embodiment of a radio communication system 100implements an approach to acquisition of the direction of arrival of alimited number of radio signals arriving at an antenna array 110, whichis composed on N antennas 112. As introduced above, one conventionalapproach to detecting one or more directions of arrival of radio signalsarriving at the antenna array is to scan a directional antenna patternacross all the possible directions of arrival, noting those directionsin which the magnitude of the signal is greatest.

In the system shown in FIG. 1, the antenna array is a linear array of Nantennas, in this embodiment with a separation between antennas ofone-half the radio wavelength, d=λ/2. However, it should be recognizedthat in other embodiments, some of which are described more fully laterin this document, different spacing, and different configurations ofantennas can be used with essentially the same approach as is describedwith reference to FIG. 1.

The antennas 112 provide signals to a number of separate radio frequency(RF) signal chains. As shown in FIG. 1, there are B separate RF signalchains. The n^(th) antenna produces a signal h_(n)(t), which isrepresented as a complex quantity (i.e., the real and imaginary partsrepresenting the two quadrature components). In general, the dependenceon time is omitted, and the n^(th) antenna signal is denoted h_(n).Below, h denotes a column vector (h₁, . . . , h_(N))^(T) of antennasignals received at the N antennas of the antenna array.

In each RF signal chain, the N antenna signals pass though aconfigurable phase adjustment component 120, which modifies the phase ofeach of the antenna signals. In this embodiment, the magnitudes are notadjusted individually, however, it should be understood that in otherembodiments, the system may also provide limited or complete control ofmagnitude (gain), as well as phase, of the antenna signals. In thisembodiment in which only phase is controlled, the n^(th) antenna signalh_(n) is modified by a phase ϕ_(n) 122, which in complex notation isrepresented as multiplication by exp(jϕ_(n)). Note that as illustratedin FIG. 1, each RF signal chain is provided to all N antenna signals asinput. In other embodiments, fewer than all the antenna signals may beprovided to each RF chain, for example, with each RF change beingassigned a separate set of antennas, or the assigned sets partiallyoverlapping.

The phase modified signals in a particular RF signal chain are summed ina summer 130, and then the time average magnitude of the sum isdetermined in a magnitude computation element 140. The result for theb^(th) signal chain is therefore

$y_{b} = {{\underset{n = 1}{\sum\limits^{N}}{h_{n}{\exp\left( {j\;\phi_{n}} \right)}}}}$

which can be represented in matrix notation asy _(b) =|a ^(b) h|

where a^(b) is the vector of complex phase adjustment terms for theb^(th) signal chain.

Note that for a conventional beam-forming approach, for the N elementarray with one-half wavelength separation, adjustment of the phases inorder to direct an antenna pattern to have a main directional lobe in aspatial direction θ is achieved by setting ϕ_(n)=(n−1)π cos θ. Using thesystem shown in FIG. 1, with B signal chains, the system can determinethe signal level arriving from B separate directions for oneconfiguration of the of the phase adjustments a¹ through a^(B) usingsuch an approach to setting of the phase modifications. However, toconsider N directions, N different antenna patterns are used, which ifused in succession would require N/B time intervals of signal receptiontaking advantage of the B RF signal chains to scan all N directions.

Continuing to refer to FIG. 1, we assume that there are N signals x_(i)arriving at the array at corresponding directions θ_(i), with a complexvector representing these signals being denoted x=(x₁, . . . ,x_(N))^(T). Based on the physical arrangement of the antennas, in matrixnotation, the antenna signals are related to these arriving signals ash=F′x

where the entries of F′ are complex with unit magnitude. In the case ofa linear array with d=λ/2 spacing, F′ is an inverse Fourier matrix.However, it should be understood that other arrangements than lineararrays (e.g., a circular array, a rectangular array) can be addressed inthis manner, with F′ having other forms when other antennaconfigurations are used. Furthermore, although described in the contextof directions of arrival being in a single two-dimensional plane,three-dimensional directional determination uses essentially the sameapproach.

Because F′ is invertible with inverse F also having unit magnitudecomplex entries, the vector of N signals x_(i) can be reconstructed asx=Fh

and a particular direction signal can be reconstructed asx _(i) =F _(i) h

where F_(i) denotes the i^(th) row of F. Therefore, if the phase offsetsare chosen as a=F_(i), and the output is computed as y=|ah|, then thesize of y reflects the magnitude of x_(i). That is, if x_(i) is zero,then y will be small, but not necessarily zero due to sidelobe responseof the antenna pattern to signals from other directions. Note that thephase offsets may be chosen with a common random phase, as a=F_(i)exp(−2πt_(r)/N), for example for a random number t_(r), withoutaffecting the magnitude y.

Note that in general, most of the signals x_(i) are zero because thereis no direct or reflected path arriving from the transmitter in thatdirection. Therefore, the vector x is assumed to be sparse, for example,with only K out of N non-zero terms (this is referred to as “K-sparse”).

The system 100 uses an approach that determines the directions ofarriving signals without requiring scanning over the possible directionsof arrival. Very generally, rather than using a multiple antennapatterns to scan the directions of arrival, with each antenna patternhaving a single relatively narrow directional lobe in a particulardirection, the system uses multiple antenna patterns with each antennapattern having R>1 lobes. In each iteration of a series of iterations,the system makes use of B antenna patterns, which are formed using phaseoffsets a¹, . . . , a^(b), . . . , a^(B) such that the received valuesare determined as y_(b)=|a^(b)h|. The vector of these received valuesy=Ah, where the rows of A are the phase offsets a^(b), is referred to asthe “hash” of the signal directions. Through a suitable selection of theantenna patterns, the system uses O(K log N) antenna patterns, ratherthan O(N) patterns, to identify K out of N directions of arrival.

As is described in substantially more detail below, a first aspect of anapproach used by a beam acquisition controller 150 of the system is toset the phase offsets a¹, . . . , a^(B) such that (i) each correspondingantenna pattern has high gain in multiple lobes (generally R lobes), and(ii) together, the antenna patterns are “comprehensive” in that a signalarriving from any direction θ will be received with high gain via atleast one of the antenna patterns. Generally, using such a set ofantenna patterns, the signal magnitudes are used to determine adirectional profile T(i), which is a positive function of the directionindex i (or alternatively of the continuous or discretized direction θ)such that the function has relatively larger values for directions thatare consistent with the true directions of arrival of the signals.However, with one iteration there will generally remain ambiguity as tothe true directions. Note that if there are fewer than B RF chains in analternative embodiment, multiple sub-iterations may be performedsequentially to make use of all B patterns, for example, using onepattern at a time if there is only a single RF chain.

A second aspect of the approach involves performing a number (L)iterations, with a different set of antenna patterns being used at eachiteration. Each iteration yields different directional information.However, when combined across the iterations, the resulting directionsinformation T(i) output from the beam acquisition controller has lowambiguity, and can serve as a replacement of a scanning approach thatwould have taken more iterations to yield similar spatial accuracy.

A summary of the notation introduced above, as well as additionalnotation used later in this description is as follows:

-   -   x is a column vector (x₁, . . . , x_(N))^(T) of (complex)        arriving signals arriving at the antenna array from        corresponding directions θ₁, . . . , θ_(N). In general, the        vector is sparse in that most of the entries are zero or much        smaller in magnitude than the other entries. The vector is        referred to as “K-sparse” to denote that there are at most K        such larger entries. The dependence on time for x_(i), as in        x_(i)(t), is generally omitted, as it is for other signals as        well.    -   h is a column vector (h₁, . . . , h_(N))^(T) of (complex)        antenna signals received at the N antennas of the antenna array.        In matrix notation, the antenna signals are related to the        arriving signals as h=F′x.    -   F′ is a complex matrix that represents the phase offsets (as        complex exponential terms with magnitude 1) introduced for        signals arriving from the N directions θ₁, . . . , θ_(N). For        example, with a uniformly spaced linear array of antennas        separated by distance d, [F′]_(n,k)=exp(j2πn(d−1)cos(θ_(k))/λ).        That is, F′ is an inverse Fourier Transform matrix. (In general,        matrix inverse is denoted by ′)    -   a is a row vector of phase offsets (exp(jϕ₁), . . . ,        exp(jϕ_(N))) for application to the corresponding antenna        signals (h₁, . . . , h_(N)) for implementing a corresponding        directional antenna pattern.    -   y is a non-negative real number computed as y=|ah|=|aF′x| as the        received signal according to the directional antenna pattern        determined by the phases a=(exp(jϕ₁), . . . , exp(jϕ_(N))).    -   y is a column vector (y₁, . . . , y_(B))^(T) with received for B        antenna patterns associated with B sets of phases offsets a₁, .        . . , a_(B) represented as a matrix A such that y=|AF′x|.    -   R is the number of lobes over the directions θϵ[0, 180) in each        antenna pattern.    -   B is the number of antenna patterns (i.e., the dimension of y),        also referred to as the number of frequency “bins.” In general,        B is chosen to be equal to or greater than N/R². The phase        settings for a particular bin b are denoted a^(b).    -   ρ is a permutation of 1, . . . , N such that index i is moved to        ρ(i).    -   P is a generalized permutation matrix such that each row and        each column has exactly one non-zero entry, and that entry is a        complex quantity with magnitude 1.    -   I(b, i) is a magnitude square response of an antenna pattern        resulting from phase offsets a^(b) in a direction θ_(i).    -   T(i) is a directional profile over directions θ_(i) of possible        directions of arrival.

Beam Design

As introduced above, the antenna pattern for a particular RF signalchain and a particular iteration is controlled by the phase offsets aproducing an antenna pattern with R lobes. A procedure for setting thephase offsets that is used in this embodiment segments the vector ofphase offsets a into R segments, each with N/R contiguous entries. Ther^(th) segment is associated with a lobe direction index s^(r) (i.e.,direction θ_(s) _(r) ), and is formed from the row F_(s) _(r) . That is,the r^(th) segment of a has entries a_(i) chosen asa _(i) =F _(s) _(r) _(,i) exp(−2πt _(r) /N)where(r−1)N/R<i≤rN/R

and F_(s) _(r) _(,i) is the element at row s^(r) and column i of F, andt_(r) is chosen at random for each segment.

For a particular antenna pattern, one consideration in selecting thedirections s¹, . . . , s^(R) is such that sidelobes of the part of thepattern for a directions s^(i) falls on another direction s^(j) of thesame pattern.

In some embodiments, the directions are chosen to be uniformly spacedaccording to the cosine of the angle. For example, the angles are chosensuch thatθ_(i)=cos⁻¹(2i/N) for −N/2≤i≤N/2

which for N=16 can be indexed from i=−7 to i=8 to yield the angles(rounded)θ=(151,139,129,120,112,105,97,90,83,76,68,60,51,41,29,0)

One approach to construct the B patterns is to select different subsetsof the directions for each pattern. Referring to FIG. 2, the selectionof direction indexes for this choice of N=16 directions, denoted s_(b)as the direction indexes for the b^(th) pattern, may be chosen ass ₁=(−4,0,4,8)s ₂=(−5,−1,3,7)s ₃=(−6,−2,2,6)s ₄=(−7,−3,1,5)

Note that over the B patterns, all N=16 directions are represented, witheach direction represented in exactly one pattern. In the exampleillustrated in FIG. 2, the spacing of antennas is assumed to be one-halfof a wavelength, therefore a lobe at θ=0 results in a corresponding lobeat θ=180. Furthermore, not illustrated are the lobes over the range ofdirections from 180 degrees to 360 degrees, recognizing that for eachpattern, there are in fact 2R lobes over the full range of directions(i.e., each lobe at θ_(i) is associated with a corresponding lobe at−θ_(i)). However, the focus of the description below is on acquisitionof angles in the range 0 to 180 degrees.

Using the procedure described above, for a set of directions s_(b), thecorresponding phase offsets a^(b) determined using the segmentationapproach described above are used to determine y_(b)=|a^(b)h| for b=1, .. . , B.

The information characterizing the direction(s) that are represented inthese signals is determined using a combination approach in which theresponse to each signal direction i with antenna pattern b isprecomputed asI(b,i)=|a ^(b) F′ _(i)|².

Referring to FIG. 2, the antenna pattern functions I(b, i) (plottedversus θ rather than direction index i) are shown. These plots show thatthe lobes of the B patterns do not overlap, and together if combinedcomprehensively cover the entire range of θ from 0 to 180 degrees.

For one iteration, a directional response profile T(i) may be computedfrom the received magnitudes y_(b) in a variety of ways. One approach isa “soft voting” approach in which

${T(i)} = {\sum\limits_{b = 1}^{B}{y_{b}^{2}{I\left( {b,i} \right)}}}$

which is optionally normalized by the sum Σ_(b) y_(b) ². In otherembodiments, a “hard voting” approach may be used in which T(i) isselected as I(b*, i) for the pattern b* with the largest magnitudey_(b*).

Note that after one iteration, even with only a single direction beingrepresented in the received signals x, there is ambiguity in thepossible directions represented by T(i). Generally, one of the y_(b) issubstantially larger than the others, which may be small but non-zerobecause there is “leakage” between the antenna patterns. Furthermore,for that pattern, b, the response pattern I(b, i) is large for about R²values of i.

Generally, in the case of phase-only control on the antenna signals,because N/R antennas are used for a particular lobe, the lobe fordirection s^(r) has substantial response for a width of R directionsaround s^(r). With R lobes in one antenna pattern, the patternessentially covers R² of the N directions. Therefore a group of B≥N/R²antenna patterns may be used to together comprehensively cover all the Ndirections. In this example, B=N/R² and with this selection of anglesthe four antenna patterns provide comprehensive coverage of thedirections.

Beam Pattern Iteration

As introduced above, with B antenna patterns, the resulting responseT(i) after one iteration will in general exhibit substantial ambiguityregarding the direction(s) of received signals (i.e., there may bemultiple modes in the distribution T(i)). Therefore, an iterativeapproach is used in which at each iteration, a different set of Bantenna patterns are used to hash the received signal, and the responsesfrom the iterations are combined.

On the first iteration, the procedure yields a vector y⁽¹⁾=|A⁽¹⁾h| asthe “hash” of the directions of arrival of the signals, which informsthe directional response T(i). A goal of each iteration is to yield newinformation about the directional response in a series of further hashesy^((l)) for l=2, . . . , L. Generally, an approach to avoidinggenerating merely redundant information is to form these hashes in arandom manner, essentially by choosing the set of beam patterns atrandom at each iteration, maintaining the structure that each beampattern has R lobes and that together, the beam patterns at anyiteration are comprehensive covering all N directions. The beam patternsfor the l^(th) iteration are characterized by the phase offset matrixA^((l)), each row of which provides one set of phase offsetscorresponding to one entry in the vector hash y^((l)). Referring to FIG.3, antenna patterns for a second iteration are selected in a manner toprovide additional information through a second hash of the receivedsignals.

One systematic approach to computing each randomized matrix of phaseoffsets A^((l)) for l>1 is to randomly transform the beam patternsdefined by A⁽¹⁾ used in the first iteration. As discussed below, oneapproach to form this random transformation of the beam patterns is forthe transformation to correspond to a random permutation of thedirections in which each of lobes of the beam patterns are responsive.In particular, a permutation of the direction indexes, ρ, is selected,and the beam patterns are essentially transformed such that if a beampattern had a lobe in direction i in the first iteration, in the currentiteration, it has a lobe at direction ρ(i). Because ρ is a permutation,each beam pattern retains the property that it has R lobes, and togetherthe beam patterns retain the property that they are comprehensivelycovering all N directions.

One approach to selecting a permutation ρ for the l^(th) iteration, andwith it determining the corresponding modified phase offset matrixA^((l)) as a transformation of the first iteration matrix A⁽¹⁾, makesuse of a property of Fourier matrices. When the antenna array has alinear arrangement of N antennas and the directions are chosen to beuniformly spaced in cos θ, as described above, then F is a Fouriermatrix, such that the vector of antenna responses can be represented ash=F′x (as presented above). Consistent with the property of Fouriermatrices, scaling the indices of the entries of the input signals x suchthat {circumflex over (x)}(i)=x(σi) (the multiplication by the integer σbeing performed modulo N) results in the entries of the antenna responsealso being scaled as ĥ(j)=h(σ⁻¹j). As a result, if phase offsets a,which when applied to h corresponds to a beam pattern with lobes withdirection indices s¹, . . . , s^(R), when applied to h corresponds to abeam pattern with direction indexes σs¹, . . . , σs^(R), where themultiplications are computed modulo N. In this example, the permutationcorresponds to ρ(j)=σ⁻¹j mod N, such that ĥ(j)=h(ρ(j)).

The permutation ρ can be represented as a matrix P, in which each rowand each column of P has one non-zero entry, which in the case ofscaling by an integer mod N as introduced above is equal to 1.Specifically, for the permutation ρ(j)=σ⁻¹j mod N, the column i, row atentry (indices computed mod N) of P is 1 for i=1, . . . , N. Therefore,the permutation of the inputs may be represented as {circumflex over(x)}=Px and therefore the permuted antenna signal can be represented asĥ=F′Px. Applying the original phase offsets A defining the original beampatterns to the permuted antenna signals, as y=Aĥ, effectively hashesthe original signals with a permuted antenna pattern. However, theelements of the input signal x cannot actually be permuted, andtherefore the identityy=|Aĥ|=|AF′Px|=|AP′F′x|=|(AP′)h|

provides equivalent ways of computing the hash h under the permutationof the inputs which is equivalent to permutation of the directions ofthe beam pattern lobes. Therefore, under the permutation ρ andassociated permutation matrix P, the matrix of phase offsets A isreplaced by AP′, or equivalently, each phase offset vector a^(b) isreplaced by a^(b)P′.

More generally, P′ may be a generalized permutation matrix in which eachrow or column of P′ contains exactly one non-zero entry, and that entryhas unit magnitude. The matrix P′ defined as in [2]: the i-th column ofP′ contains the value ω^(aσi) in the row σ(i−b), where ω=e^(2πj/N) anda, b, σ are randomly chosen parameters. This has the effect ofrearranging the vector x by moving the entry x_(i) to x_(ρ(i)) forρ(i)=σ⁻¹i+a, and multiplying it by ω^(bj+σba).

As presented above, in the absence of a permutation, the directionalresponse for beam pattern b in the direction with index i isI(b,i)=|a ^(b) F′ _(i)|².

Now with the permutation ρ, the modified directional response (i.e.,with a^(b) replaced by a^(b)P′) isI(b,i)=|a ^(b) F′ _(ρ(i))|².

The responses T(i) defined above with a subscript l denote the iterationin which it is computed, the overall response, over L iterations theoverall response may be combined as

${T(i)} = {\prod\limits_{l = 1}^{L}{T_{l}(i)}}$

In the two-iteration example shown in FIGS. 2 and 3, a signal arrivingfrom θ=60° results in T(i) having a single peak at 60°.

Beam Acquisition Procedure

The approach described above may be summarized in the flowchart shown inFIG. 4. In this example, the transmitter transmits a radio signal ateach iteration using an omnidirectional or quasi-omnidirectional antennapattern. In general, that transmission reaches the receiver (system 100shown in FIG. 1) in a small number of directions, for example, resultingfrom reflections in the environment. Steps 410-430 of FIG. 4 areperformed once per iteration. In step 410, the receiver sets the phaseoffsets A=(a¹, . . . , a^(B)) for the B signal chains. At step 420, thesystem receives the transmission and computes the magnitudes y=(y₁, . .. , y_(B))^(T), and then at step 430 computes the directional responseT_(l)(i) based on the antenna patterns and received magnitudes in thatiteration. At step 440, if this is the last of L iterations (where L maybe set based as described below) the procedure continues to step 450,otherwise the next iteration is begun with step 410, where the phaseoffset are set according to the random permutation approach describedabove. At step 450 after the last iteration, the directional responsesare combined, and the resulting directional response T(i) is provided asoutput.

In general, the number of iterations L is preset as a multiple of(K/B)log N, where K is the expected number of directions from which thesignal may arrive.

Transmitting Direction

The approach described above is in the context of a receiver determininga direction of arrival of a signal from a transmitter, which uses afixed transmission antenna pattern for all the transmissions received atthe receiver. Essentially the same procedure may be used to determinethe best direction to transmit from a transmitter to a receiver,essentially exchanging the roles of the transmitter and the receiver.References to a “propagation direction” from an antenna array should beunderstood to generically include either or both of a transmittingdirection or a receiving direction.

In the receiver direction acquisition case, there are BL scalar hashvalues, denoted y_(b) ^((l)) for the b^(th) antenna pattern for thel^(th) iteration. The transmitting direction case, BL scalar hash valuesare also determined. Here, the transmitter makes BL separatetransmissions, in groups of B transmissions each using a differentantenna pattern (i.e., adjusting the phases with the same have vectorsa^(b)). The receiver has knowledge of the beam patterns used by thetransmitter, for example, because the patterns are prearranged, orbecause the transmitter identifies them to the receiver via transmitteddata. In any case, using the measured signal magnitudes y_(b) ^((l)) andthe directional information for each beam pattern used by thetransmitter, the receiver determines the directional profile T(i), andfeeds back the profile or the estimated direction to the transmitter.

Note that the transmitter, having received the direction informationfrom the receiver sets the transmitting direction (i.e., the phaseoffsets for the antenna array) to transmit to the receiver. If thetransmitter is part of a transceiver that can also receive signals fromthe other station (i.e., the receiver during the direction acquisitionprocedure), the same propagation direction is set at the transceiver toreceive transmissions from the other station. That is, in both thereceiver direction acquisition procedure, and the transmitter directionacquisition procedure, what is determined is a propagation direction,which may be used for both transmission and reception of signals (e.g.,assuming that both directions use the same or close frequencies, whichexhibit the same or similar directional and multipath characteristics inthe environment).

Multi-Transmission Omni-Directional Emission

In the case of a receiver determining a direction of arrival from atransmitter, the discussion above essentially assumes that thetransmitter is using an omni-directional antenna pattern, for example,because the transmitter does not know the best direction in which totransmit to the receiver. However, in many cases, if the transmitteruses an antenna array (e.g., a linear array), it is not feasible for thetransmitter to form an omni-directional pattern by adjusting phases ofthe array.

An alternative is for the transmitter to make a sequence of Btransmissions (not necessarily the same value of B used by the receiverin determining the direction of arrival), with each transmission using adifferent beam pattern. A requirement is that the combination of thesebeam patters comprehensively cover the directions, therefore whenaveraged over the B transmissions, the overall pattern forms a moreuniform omnidirectional pattern than might be achievable in onetransmission by adjusting the transmission phases of the antennas.

At the receiver, for each receive antenna pattern b, and for eachtransmitting antenna pattern b′, the receiver determines a receivedmagnitude y_(b,b′) using the approach described above. Then the receiversums over the transmit patterns to determine the overall responsey_(b)=Σ_(b′)y_(b,b′) to essentially simulate a single transmission usingan omni-directional pattern. Then the remaining procedure continues asdescribed above.

Antenna Arrays on Both Transmitter and Receiver

In some situations, two transceiver stations each have antenna arrays,and each seeks to determine the best propagation direction (i.e., thebest transmit and receive direction) in which to communicate with theother station. One approach is for one transceiver to act as thereceiver, and one transceiver to act as the transmitter, and to jointlyapply procedures described above.

In each of L iterations, the transmitter (i.e., the transceiver takingthe role of the transmitter in the procedure) makes B′ transmissions,each with a different antenna pattern, b′. The receiver (i.e., thetransceiver taking the role of the receiver in the procedure) receivesthis transmission (or successive transmissions with the same pattern b′)with B different antenna patterns. The result is that the receiver hasB×B′ magnitudes y_(b,b′). For the receiver, summing over the B′ antennapatterns as y_(b)=Σ_(b′)y_(b,b′) yields the magnitude used for thereceiver's procedure described above, essentially treating the B′transmissions as providing an overall omni-directional emission pattern.For determining the transmitter's direction information, the receiversums y′_(b)=Σ_(b) y_(b,b′). The receiver determines the transmittersdirection profile using the y′_(b′) using the transmitting directionprocedure described above, essentially summing over the receive beampatterns to achieve an overall omni-directional receiving pattern. AfterL iterations, the receiver determines the receive direction in which toreceive transmissions from the transmitter, and that it will also usefor transmissions in the opposite direction. The receiver also feedsback the transmission direction to the transmitter, which uses thatdirection for transmission, as well as receiving in the oppositedirections.

Assuming that the receiver has B receive RF signal chains, a total ofB′×L transmissions are used. If each transceiver has only a single RFchain, B×B′×L transmissions are used (plus any used to pass directiondata between the stations).

Note that the described approach has each transceiver take the role ofeither a transmitter or a receiver for all L iterations, and forsub-iterations within each iteration. But it should be recognized thatthe transceivers can switch roles for particular iterations andsub-iterations, nevertheless acquiring the has values y_(b,b′) betweenthem, and with suitable exchange of the hash values of directionalinformation derived from the hash values, can determine the propagationdirections using a variant of the procedure described above.

Implementation and Results

An embodiment of the approach presented above, referred to herein asRapid-Link, uses a full-fledged mmWave radio capable of fast beamsteering. The radio operates in the new 24 GHz ISM band and serves as adaughterboard for the USRP software radios. Its physical layer supportsa full OFDM stack up to 256 QAM. Our implementation addresses criticalsystem and design issues that are described below.

Heterodyne Architecture

Millimeter Wave hardware is significantly more expensive than GHzhardware. Thus, we leverage a heterodyne architecture where the mmWavesignal is first taken into an intermediate frequency of a few GHz,before the I and Q (real & imaginary) components are separated. Such adesign reduces the number of components that need to operate at veryhigh frequencies (e.g., mixers, filters, etc) and replaces them withcomponents that operate at a few GHz, which are much cheaper.

The architecture of Rapid-Link's receiver is shown in FIG. 5(b). Thefirst block is a mmWave phased array which allows us to steer the beamelectronically. The array consists of antenna elements where eachelement is connected to a phase shifter. The outputs of the phaseshifters are combined and fed to a single mmWave front-end. Thefront-end has a standard design of a low-noise amplifier (LNA),band-pass filter, mixer, and a PLL. The mmWave front-end down-convertsthe mmWave signal to an intermediate frequency (IF) and feeds it to thedaughterboard on the USRP, which samples it and passes the digitizedsamples to the UHD driver. This enables easy manipulation of mmWavesignals using standard GNU-radio software and allows us to build an OFDMstack that supports up to 256 QAM.

The design in FIG. 5 uses off-the-shelf components. For the mmWavelow-noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA), we use HittiteHMC-C020 and Quinstar QLW-2440, respectively. For the mmWave mixer, weuse Marki M1R-0726MS. To generate local oscillator (LO) signals, we useAnalog Devices ADF5355 PLL and Hittite HMC-C035 frequency doubler. Thephased array includes 8 antenna elements separated by λ/2, where eachelement is connected to a Hittite HMC-933 analog phase shifter. We useAnalog Device AD7228 digital-to-analog converters (DAC) and an ArduinoDue micro-controller board to digitally control the phase shifters.

Radio Performance

To test Rapid-Link's ability to deliver high data rates and long rangeusing phased arrays, we measure the SNR of the received signal fordifferent distances between Rapid-Link's receiver and transmitter wherethe transmit power complies with FCC part15. FIG. 6 shows the SNR at thereceiver versus the distance between transmitter and receiver. Thefigure shows that Rapid-Link's implementation provides SNR of more than30 dB for distances smaller than 10 m and 17 dB even at 100 m which issufficient for relatively dense modulations such as 16 QAM [7].

Experimental Evaluation

We evaluate Rapid-Link's ability to identify the best beam alignmentquickly and accurately. We ran experiments in a lab area with standardfurniture (desks, chairs, computers, etc.). We also ran experiments inan anechoic chamber, where we can accurately measure the ground truth.The anechoic chamber walls are covered with RF absorbers to eliminatemultipath and isolate the space from exterior interference. Thisisolation is necessary to measure the ground truth path traveled by thesignal without having RF reflections.

We compare the following three schemes:

-   -   Exhaustive Search: In this approach, for each setting of the        transmitter's beam direction, the receiver scans all different        directions. The combination of transmitter and receiver beams        that delivered the maximum power is picked as the direction of        the signal.    -   802.11ad Standard: The standard has three phases[3]. The first        stage is called Sector Level Sweep (SLS). In this stage, the AP        transmits in all possible directions, and the client sets its        receiver beam pattern to a quasi-omnidirectional beam. The        process is then repeated with the AP setting its receiver        antenna to quasi-omnidirectional and the client sweeping through        all transmit directions. At the end of this stage, the AP and        client each pick the γ directions that deliver the largest        power. The second stage is called Multiple sector ID Detection        (MID). This stage repeats the process above but with the        transmit beam set to quasi-omni-directional and the scan being        performed with the receive beam. This stage compensates for        imperfections in the quasi omnidirectional beams. The third        stage is called Beam Combining (BC). In this stage, each of the        γ best directions at the AP are tried with each of the γ        directions at the client. Hence, γ² combinations are tested and        the combination of transmit and receive beam directions that        deliver the maximum power is then selected and used for        beamforming during the data transmission. In our experiments, we        set γ=4.    -   Rapid-Link: We run the algorithm described above where the total        number of measurements is set to K² log N, where N is the number        of possible signal directions. We set K to 4 since past        measurement studies show that in mmWave frequencies the channel        has only 2 to 3 paths [4, 1, 5, 6].

Evaluation Metrics

We evaluate the performance of Rapid-Link's beam searching algorithmalong two axes. The first is the accuracy in detecting the bestalignment of the receiver's and transmitter's beams. In this case, ourmetric is the SNR loss in comparison to the optimal alignment, i.e., howmuch SNR could we have gained had we known the ground truth. Wecalculate this metric by measuring the SNR achieved by our beamalignment and subtract it from the SNR achieved by the optimalalignment.SNR _(loss) =SNR _(optimal) −SNR _(Rapid-Link)  (1)

The lower the SNR loss, the higher is our accuracy in detecting thedirection of the signal. In order to measure the optimal SNR, we ranexperiments in an anechoic chamber where there is no multipath and wecan accurately measure the ground truth direction of the signal andalign the beams along those directions. However, we also ran experimentsin multi-path rich environments. In this case, since we do not know theground truth, we compute the SNR loss metric relative to the exhaustivesearch baseline described above.SNR _(loss) =SNR _(Exhaustive) −SNR _(Rapid-Link)  (2)

The second metric is the latency in identifying the correct beamalignment in comparison to exhaustive search and the 802.11ad standard.

Beam Alignment Accuracy vs. The Ground Truth

As described above, we first run the experiments in an anechoic chamber,where we can accurately measure the ground truth. For each experiment,we place Rapid-Link's transmitter and receiver at two differentlocations. We then change the orientation of the transmitter's andreceiver's antenna arrays with respect to each other. Since there isonly a single line-of-sight path in the anechoic chamber, this path willappear at a different direction at the transmitter and at the receiverdepending on the orientation of the antenna arrays. Hence, this allowsus to test any combination of directions from which the strongest pathcan leave the transmitter and arrive at the receiver. For each setting,the transmitter transmits measurement frames (as required in 802.11ad)which the receiver uses to compute the directions of the best beamalignment. We then steer the beams based on the output of the alignmentand measure the SNR achieved by this alignment.

We first show the best alignment detected by Rapid-Link for a particularscenario, where we set the transmitter to be at an angle of 120° withrespect to the receiver's array, and the receiver at an angle of 50°with respect to the transmitter's array. FIG. 7 shows the signaldirection recovered by Rapid-Link on the transmitter's and receiver'ssides for this scenario. As can be seen in the figure, Rapid-Link hasaccurately identified the direction of arrival of the signal at thereceiver as 120°, and the direction of departure of the signal from thetransmitter as 50°.

Next, we compare Rapid-Link's algorithm with the exhaustive search andthe 802.11ad standard. To do so, we repeat the above experiment bychanging the orientation of the transmitter's and receiver's antennaarrays with respect to each other. We try all possible combinations ofthe antennas' orientations, by rotating each antenna array with respectto the other for all angles between 50° and 130° with increments of 10°.FIG. 8 plots a CDF of the SNR loss for Rapid-Link's beam searchingscheme, the exhaustive search and the 802.11ad standard, in comparisonto the optimal alignment. The figure reveals two interesting points:

-   -   The figure shows that Rapid-Link performs better than the two        baselines in that it has minimal SNR loss. While all schemes        have a median SNR loss below 1 dB, the 90^(th) percentile SNR        loss for both exhaustive search and the standard is 3.95 dB        which is higher than the 1.89 dB SNR loss of Rapid-Link. This is        due to the fact that the standard and exhaustive search choose        to steer using the best beam from a discrete set of N beams        which they tested. However, the space of beam directions is        continuous and the best beam may not exactly align with the        discretization chosen by the algorithms. In this case, they will        end up picking the closest beam in the discrete set, which may        not be the exact optimal one. SNR loss is further exacerbated by        the fact that this can happen on both sides i.e., the        transmitter and the receiver. In contrast, Rapid-Link uses the        beams as a continuous weight over the possible choice of        directions and picks the direction that maximizes the overall        weight. Thus, Rapid-Link can discover the direction of the path        beyond the N directions used by exhaustive search and the        standard.    -   The figure also shows that the standard and exhaustive search        have similar performance. This might seem surprising since one        may expect exhaustive search to find a better beam alignment        since it spends more time searching the space. However, it is        important to recall that the standard differs from the        exhaustive search only in the first stage where it uses a        quasi-omnidirectional beam to limit the search space to a few        top candidates. In the final the stage, however, the standard        tries all possible combinations of these candidate beams. Since        there is only one path in this experiment, as long as the best        beam is picked as one of the candidate beams in the first stage,        the standard will converge to the same beam alignment as the        exhaustive search. However, we will show next that this does not        continue to hold in multipath settings.

Alignment Accuracy in Multipath Environments

We repeat the above experiments in an office environment, where due tomultipath, the signal can arrive from different directions. However, asdescribed earlier, in this case, we do not have the ground truth for thedirection of strongest path and hence we measure the SNR loss relativeto the exhaustive search baseline. Note that since exhaustive searchexhaustively tries all possible combinations of directions, it is notsensitive to multipath and maintains its performance.

FIG. 9 plots a CDF of SNR loss for Rapid-Link and the 802.11ad standardwith respect to the exhaustive search. The figure shows that thestandard performs much worse in multipath scenarios. Specifically,instead of having a similar SNR to the exhaustive search as before, themedian and 90^(th) percentile SNR loss (with respect to exhaustivesearch) are 4 dB and 12.5 dB, respectively. This is because the standardis using its phased array as a quasi-omnidirectional antenna and hencethe multiple paths can combine destructively, in which case theinformation is lost. Further, due to imperfections in thequasi-omnidirectional patterns, some paths can get attenuated and hencethe standard can easily choose the wrong direction to align its beam. Incontrast, Rapid-Link performs well even in the presence of multipath.Specifically, the median and 90^(th) percentile SNR loss with respect toexhaustive search are 0.1 dB and 2.4 dB, respectively. Finally, thefigure also shows that sometimes Rapid-Link's SNR loss with respect toexhaustive search is negative. This is because in some cases, Rapid-Linkperforms better than exhaustive search for the same reasons describedabove.

Beam Alignment Latency

Next we would like to evaluate the gain in reducing latency thatRapid-Link delivers over the two baselines. However, since our radio hasa fixed array size we cannot empirically measure how this gain scalesfor larger arrays. Hence, we perform extensive simulations to computethis gain for larger arrays and we use the empirical results from our8-antenna array to find the delay for this array size.

Reduction in the Number of Measurements:

Since each measurement in 802.11ad requires sending a special frame, oneway to measure delay is in terms of the number of measurements frames.FIG. 10 plots the reduction in the number of measurements thatRapid-Link achieves over exhaustive search and the standard. The figureshows that, for an 8-antenna phased array, Rapid-Link can reduce thenumber of measurements by 7× and 1.5× compared to exhaustive search andstandard respectively. Further, the gain increases quickly as the numberof antennas increase. This is due to the scaling property of eachalgorithm and whether it is quadratic, linear, or logarithmic. Thefigure shows that the gain of Rapid-Link over exhaustive search and thestandard increases very fast and for arrays of size 256 is 16.4× betterthan the standard and three orders of magnitude better than exhaustivesearch.

Alternatives

In the description of the embodiment above, the method for forming anR-lobe beam makes use of segmentation of the phase offsets, andcombining segments for different directions. Other approaches may beused. For example, an optimization of phase setting may be used toachieve an antenna pattern with desired lobe directions and widths, forexample, using an optimization procedure such as a Genetic Algorithm(GA), which is tolerant of the highly non-convex nature of theoptimization. In some examples, the segmented approach is used toinitialize a further optimization. In some examples, the multipleantenna patterns that provide comprehensive coverage of the directionspace are optimized jointly.

Although described in the context of a uniform spacing linear array, theapproach is equally applicable to other array structures. For example, anon-uniform spacing or circular rather than linear structure may beused. Furthermore, although described in the context of a scalardirection (i.e., a direction acquisition in a two-dimensional plane) theapproach is equally applicable to beam acquisition in the context of atwo dimensional antenna array, for example, a square array, with thedirections being characterized by angles in two orthogonal directions.

In the case of a three-dimensional problem of acquiring two directionalangles, very generally, a set of three-dimensional multi-lobe patternsmay be used at each iteration, and the directional profile T( ) is afunction of two angles. In the case of a rectangular array (e.g., asquare array), the problem may be decomposed in the two axes (referredto as the x and y axes for convenience). In this discussion, we assumethat each axis has the same number of antennas, and therefore there areN² antennas, and we assume that there are the same number of patterns(B) and the same number of lobes (R) on each axis, but it should beunderstood that different values may be used for each axis, and itshould be evident how the procedure is modified to accommodate thisdifference.

In this alternative embodiment, there are N×N antennas in a squarearray, and B² patterns, each with R² lobes are used. The phase offsetsare determined by forming an R-lobe pattern on each axis, and combiningthe phase offsets for each axis to form the phase offsets for an R²-lobepattern. In the case of the receiver performing the iterations, the hashhas B² entries, which may be denoted y_(bx,by). These values may besummed for each axis, for example, y_(bx)=Σ_(by)y_(bx,by), and twodirectional profiles, T_(x)(i) and T_(y)(i) determined separately ateach iteration. Over the L iterations, an angle along each axis isdetermined separately, thereby acquiring the three-dimensionalpropagation direction.

At each iteration in approaches described above, a vector of signalmagnitudes y is obtained. As described above, one approach is a “softvoting” approach in which the squares of the signal magnitudes scaledirectional response functions within each iteration and the results aremultiplied over the L iterations. Other approaches may be used. Forexample, a probabilistic approach may be used in which each iterationyields a directional probability distribution, and these distributionsare combined over the iterations to yield a combined probabilitydistribution.

In the examples described above, the beam patterns are comprehensiveover a complete range of directions, for example from 0 to 180 degrees.In some embodiments, the range of directions may be limited (e.g., from45 to 135 degrees) and the approach can nevertheless be used by usingnon-overlapping beam patterns that are comprehensive over the restrictrange.

Finally, as introduced above and reiterated here, alternativeembodiments of the approaches described above are applicable, forexample, in situations in which a linear array has spacing other thanone-half wavelengths or non-uniform spacing, with a one-dimensionalarray that is not linear (e.g., circular, triangular), with atwo-dimensional array that is not rectangular, with sampled directionsthat are not uniform in cosine, where the patterns are not determined bypermutation of directions for each iteration, and when the phase offsetsare recomputed rather than transformed for each permutation ofdirections. However, it should be recognized that combinations offeatures in the embodiments described in detail above may provideperformance or computational advantages, which are not necessarilyachieved in some of the alternatives enumerated above.

Embodiments of the approaches may make use of hardware, software, or acombination of hardware and software. Hardware may include ApplicationSpecific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGAs), and the like. Software may includes instructions stored onnon-transitory machine-readable media (e.g., semiconductor flashmemory), and these instructions, when executed by one or more processors(e.g., a special purpose or a general purpose processor) implement theprocedures described above. The instructions may be at various levels,including machine-level instructions and higher-level instructions.

It is to be understood that the foregoing description is intended toillustrate and not to limit the scope of the invention. Otherembodiments are within the scope of the following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for determining a propagation directionof a signal within a range of directions at a transceiver coupled to aplurality of antenna elements, the method comprising: performing aniterative procedure in which, at each iteration of a plurality ofiterations, the signal is passed via the plurality of antenna elementsand processed according a set of antenna patterns for the iteration toyield a plurality of plurality of response values, each response valueof the plurality of response values at an iteration representing astrength of response to the signal according to a different pattern ofthe set of antenna patterns for the iteration, each plurality ofresponse values for an iteration having a greatest value correspondingto one of the patterns of the set of antenna patterns for thatiteration, wherein each iteration uses a different set of antennapatterns, each set of antenna patterns includes a pattern with multipledirectional lobes, for each set of antenna patterns, a direction of eachdirectional lobe of each pattern is distinct from the directions of allother directional lobes of other patterns in said set, and for each setof antenna patterns, for each propagation direction within the range ofdirections, at least one antenna pattern provides substantial responseto signals in said propagation direction; and combining the plurality ofresponse values from each iteration to yield a characterization of thepropagation direction of the signal by combining antenna patterns of thesets of antenna patterns, including combining the pattern correspondingto the response value having the greatest value from each iteration toyield a directional profile of the received signal.
 2. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the transceiver comprises a receiver and the signal isreceived via the plurality of antenna elements, the propagationdirection comprising a direction of arrival of the signal.
 3. The methodof claim 2 wherein the signal is transmitted to the receiver using anomni-directional antenna pattern at the transmitter.
 4. The method ofclaim 2 wherein the signal is transmitted to the receiver usingsuccessive multi-lobe antenna patterns, which together form asubstantially an omni-directional antenna pattern at the transmitter. 5.The method of claim 1 wherein the transceiver comprises a transmitterand the signal is transmitted via the plurality of antenna elements, thepropagation direction comprising a direction of transmission of thesignal.
 6. The method of claim 5 wherein the response values aredetermined at a receiver of the signal.
 7. The method of claim 1 whereincombining the plurality of response values from each iteration comprisescombining only the pattern corresponding to the response value havingthe greatest value from each iteration.
 8. The method of claim 1 whereincombining the plurality of response values from each iteration comprisescombining multiple patterns from each iteration weighted according tothe plurality of response values for that iteration.
 9. The method ofclaim 1 wherein characterization of the propagation direction of thesignal comprises a distribution over directions in the range ofdirections.
 10. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining thepropagation direction from the characterization of the direction ofarrival.
 11. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining arestricted range of directions from the characterization of thepropagation direction, and determining the propagation direction withinthe restricted range.
 12. The method of claim 1 wherein for at leastsome sets of the antenna patterns, each pattern in said set has a samenumber of directional lobes.
 13. The method of claim 1 wherein the setsof antenna patterns are determined prior to the signal beingtransmitted.
 14. The method of claim 1 further comprising determiningthe sets of antenna patterns.
 15. The method of claim 14 whereindetermining the sets of antenna patterns includes randomizing theantenna patterns.
 16. The method of claim 14 wherein determining thesets of antenna patterns determining a second set of antenna patternsfrom a first set of antenna patterns by a random transformation.
 17. Themethod of claim 16 wherein each pattern of the second set of antennapatterns corresponds to a different pattern of the first set of antennapatterns, and the directions of directional lobes of the pattern of thesecond set are related to the directions of directional lobes of thepattern of the first set by a random permutation of directions.
 18. Themethod of claim 1 wherein a plurality of antenna elements form a linearequally spaced array.
 19. The method of claim 1 wherein the antennapatterns of the sets of antenna patterns are two-dimensional.
 20. Themethod of claim 1 wherein the antenna patterns of the sets of antennapatterns are three-dimensional.
 21. The method of claim 1 whereinperforming the iterative procedure includes performing iterations insequence using different time portions of the signal.
 22. An apparatusfor determining a propagation direction of a signal within a range ofdirections at a transceiver coupled to a plurality of antenna elements,the apparatus including one or more processors and instructions storedon a machine-readable medium for causing the one or more processors toperform operations including: performing an iterative procedure inwhich, at each iteration of a plurality of iterations, the signal ispassed via the plurality of antenna elements and processed according aset of antenna patterns for the iteration to yield a plurality ofplurality of response values, each response value of the plurality ofresponse values at an iteration representing a strength of response tothe signal according to a different pattern of the set of antennapatterns for the iteration, each plurality of response values for aniteration having a greatest value corresponding to one of the patternsof the set of antenna patterns for that iteration, wherein eachiteration uses a different set of antenna patterns, each set of antennapatterns includes a pattern with multiple directional lobes, for eachset of antenna patterns, a direction of each directional lobe of eachpattern is distinct from the directions of all other directional lobesof other patterns in said set, and for each set of antenna patterns, foreach propagation direction with the range of directions, at least oneantenna pattern provides substantial response to signals in saidpropagation direction; and combining the plurality of response valuesfrom each iteration to yield a characterization of the propagationdirection of the signal by combining antenna patterns of the sets ofantenna patterns, including combining the pattern corresponding to theresponse value having the greatest value from each iteration to yield adirectional profile of the received signal.
 23. A non-transitorymachine-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon forcausing a processor of a transceiver coupled to a plurality of antennaelements to perform operations including: performing an iterativeprocedure in which, at each iteration of a plurality of iterations, thesignal is passed via the plurality of antenna elements and processedaccording a set of antenna patterns for the iteration to yield aplurality of plurality of response values, each response value of theplurality of response values at an iteration representing a strength ofresponse to the signal according to a different pattern of the set ofantenna patterns for the iteration, each plurality of response valuesfor an iteration having a greatest value corresponding to one of thepatterns of the set of antenna patterns for that iteration, wherein eachiteration uses a different set of antenna patterns, each set of antennapatterns includes a pattern with multiple directional lobes, for eachset of antenna patterns, a direction of each directional lobe of eachpattern is distinct from the directions of all other directional lobesof other patterns in said set, and for each set of antenna patterns, foreach propagation direction with the range of directions, at least oneantenna pattern provides substantial response to signals in saidpropagation direction; and combining the plurality of response valuesfrom each iteration to yield a characterization of the propagationdirection of the signal by combining antenna patterns of the sets ofantenna patterns, including combining the pattern corresponding to theresponse value having the greatest value from each iteration to yield adirectional profile of the received signal.
 24. A method for determiningan antenna pattern for communicating with a remote station via atransceiver coupled to a plurality of antenna elements, the methodcomprising: communicating with the remote station via the antenna arrayaccording to a plurality of different antenna patterns, each antennapattern characterizing a directional response; for each of the antennapatterns, determining a strength of response to the communication viathe antenna array; and combining directional characteristics of theantenna patterns and respective strengths of response to determine anantenna pattern for communicating with the remote station; wherein: atleast some of the antenna patterns having multiple directional lobes;each direction within a range of directions has substantial directionalresponse for multiple of the antenna patterns; and combining thedirectional characteristics of the antenna patterns includes forming theantenna pattern for communicating with the remote station according tocharacteristics of the directional lobes of multiple of the antennapatterns.
 25. The method of claim 24 wherein combining the directionalcharacteristics includes selecting a subset of the antenna patternsaccording to the respective strengths of response of said patterns,determining one or more directions according to directional lobes ofantenna patterns of said selected subject, and forming the antennapattern for communicating with the remote station according to thedetermined one or more directions such said antenna pattern hassubstantial response in each of said one or more directions.